Latest News

Seed dormancy may hold the key to fighting weeds

Researchers are studying rice genes as a model to understand germination

Weeds flourish in agricultural, urban, and natural settings because they have certain characteristics, such as seed dormancy, that provide for their persistence. Dormant weed seeds in the soil avoid exposure to control practices that target emerging weed seedlings.

Scientists from the USDA-Agricultural Research Service and North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, are focusing their research on underst

Circadian influence in plants more widespread than previously thought

While picking apart the genetic makeup of the plant Arabidopsis, two Dartmouth researchers made a startling discovery. They found that approximately 36 percent of its genome is potentially regulated by the circadian clock, which is three and a half times more than had previously been estimated.

The study, which appears in the June issue of Plant Physiology, was conducted by C. Robertson McClung, Dartmouth professor of biological sciences, and Todd Michael, a former Dartmouth graduate studen

Protecting vessel loss in the eyes of premature infants

As premature infants often have under-developed lungs, oxygen is administered following birth. One devastating side effect, however, is the development of retinopathy of prematurity (ROP), whereupon oxygen administration to the infant suppresses the expression of essential growth factors that promote the development of retinal blood vessels, resulting in blindness. In the July 1 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, a study by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospit

ESA’s Mars Express first check-out nearly complete

ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft is progressing further every day on its journey to the Red Planet. Everything is set for arrival at Mars on the night of 25 December 2003, after a journey of about 400 million kilometres. In the weeks since its launch, engineers have started to thoroughly test the spacecraft and its equipment.

This testing phase is standard for all spacecraft on the way to their destination. Known as commissioning, it began 3 weeks after the launch. During this time, ground cont

Pitt researchers find genes for depression; Play role in mood disorders, shorter lifespan

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have completed the first survey of the entire human genome for genes that affect the susceptibility of individuals to developing clinical depression.

George S. Zubenko, M.D., Ph.D., professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and adjunct professor of biological sciences at Carnegie Mellon University and his team have located a number of chromosomal regions they say hold the genetic keys to a variety of mental illness

Simulation software beats traditional approach in online course

Students in an online class who learned networking through a commercially available simulation scored higher and retained more course information than students taught with a traditional network-diagramming software package, says a Penn State researcher.

“Those students also demonstrated better understanding of the networking concepts and indicated they spent more time on course assignments,” said Brian Cameron, instructor in Penn State’s School of Information Sciences and Technology (I

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Physics and Astronomy

A novel universal light-based technique

…to control valley polarization in bulk materials. An international team of researchers reports in Nature a new method that achieves valley polarization in centrosymmetric bulk materials in a non-material-specific way…

Molecular Fingerprint Beyond the Nyquist Frequency

Ultrafast laser spectroscopy allows the ascertainment of dynamics over extremely short time scales, making it a very useful tool in many scientific and industrial applications. A major disadvantage is the…

Eruption of mega-magnetic star lights up nearby galaxy

Thanks to ESA satellites, an international team including UNIGE researchers has detected a giant eruption coming from a magnetar, an extremely magnetic neutron star. While ESA’s satellite INTEGRAL was observing…

Life Sciences and Chemistry

A universal framework for spatial biology

SpatialData is a freely accessible tool to unify and integrate data from different omics technologies accounting for spatial information, which can provide holistic insights into health and disease. Biological processes…

How evolution has optimised the magnetic sensor in birds

The magnetic sense of migratory birds is probably based on the protein cryptochrome 4, and a genetic study has now provided further support for this theory. A team of researchers…

High-energy-density aqueous battery based on halogen multi-electron transfer

Traditional non-aqueous lithium-ion batteries have a high energy density, but their safety is compromised due to the flammable organic electrolytes they utilize. Aqueous batteries use water as the solvent for…

Materials Sciences

Diamond dust shines bright in Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Potential alternative to widely used contrast agent gadolinium. Some of the world’s greatest discoveries happened by accident. While the discovery of diamond dust’s potential as a future MRI contrast agent…

Making diamonds at ambient pressure

Scientists develop novel liquid metal alloy system to synthesize diamond under moderate conditions. Did you know that 99% of synthetic diamonds are currently produced using high-pressure and high-temperature (HPHT) methods?[2]…

Bringing bio-inspired robots to life

Nebraska researcher Eric Markvicka gets NSF CAREER Award to pursue manufacture of novel materials for soft robotics and stretchable electronics. Engineers are increasingly eager to develop robots that mimic the…

Information Technology

Airborne single-photon lidar system achieves high-resolution 3D imaging

Compact, low-power system opens doors for photon-efficient drone and satellite-based environmental monitoring and mapping. Researchers have developed a compact and lightweight single-photon airborne lidar system that can acquire high-resolution 3D…

AI tool creates ‘synthetic’ images of cells

…for enhanced microscopy analysis. Observing individual cells through microscopes can reveal a range of important cell biological phenomena that frequently play a role in human diseases, but the process of…

Skyrmions move at record speeds

… a step towards the computing of the future. An international research team led by scientists from the CNRS1 has discovered that the magnetic nanobubbles2 known as skyrmions can be…